Inspection robot with low cost perception sensing

Photo of bearings of the Centenary Bridge, Leeds

Inspection robot with low cost perception sensing

Jun 21 2016

Harriet Peel, George Morgan, Colin Peel, Anthony Cohn, Raul Fuentes

This paper presents the use of-off-the shelf products as a low cost solution to bridge bearing inspection. A commercial product, known as a DiddyBorg, is a robot designed for use with a Raspberry Pi as the on-board computer. The DiddyBorg is used as a robotic platform to make a photogrammetric survey of the bearing area of a bridge. The images collected from this survey are then used to make a 3D reconstruction using Structure-from-Motion (SfM) and software 3DFlow Zephyr Aerial (Zephyr). The quality of the 3D reconstruction had an accuracy of +/- 3 cm when compared to the known dimensions of the area. The resulting point cloud was then used as a map that the robot can use for navigation purposes. In particular, we present a simple localization algorithm based on distance three readings measured from the robot.

Harriet Peel, George Morgan, Colin Peel, Anthony Cohn, Raul Fuentes (2016). Inspection robot with low cost perception sensing. Proceedings of: 33rd International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC 2016). Read Publication

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